[E3-hacking] Just got an e3 - where do I start

[Edward Robbins]

Sorry for 3rd email...

Using a 9V supply the emailer appears to start - email and voice lights
flash, then after some time the power light comes on when I press power,
and camera light comes on when I then press video, but the LCD does not
come on. So I suspect that amstrad were being cheap in choosing such a high
voltage PSU - because they didn't want to include a backlight inverter to
boost the voltage for the LCD backlight. I thus further suspect that I can
still talk to the serial port without the full voltage input... so if I
build a cable, is there a way I can tell which PBL I have from the serial
output?

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Edward Robbins <edd.robbins at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> Hmm... actually programming the AT49LV1024 looks to be a pain in the butt,
> so I guess if it has PBL 5.1 I am screwed.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 11:45 PM, Edward Robbins <
> edd.robbins at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello e3 hackers,
>>
>> I just received an e3, which to start with I'd just like to get a kernel
>> to boot on (not quite sure what I'll do with it yet -  but that will come
>> later).
>>
>> The guy that gave it to me me said it had been in storage for some time,
>> so fingers crossed that it has not been updated. I don't know yet because I
>> haven't got a compatible PSU yet!
>>
>> If I understand correctly it's the proprietary bootloader on the 128Kb
>> NOR flash that may have been updated making it difficult to hack? Would it
>> be possible to get around this by flashing manually (using an AVR or
>> similar?) If so would anyone be able to supply the correct binary image for
>> the flash?
>>
>> Assuming I can pass this hurdle, what is the shape of linux support for
>> this now? I see from reading the mailing list that the late 2.6 series
>> worked fine... how about 3.x? How about defconfigs with full (or as much as
>> possible) hardware support? I am happy cross compiling a kernel... I guess
>> I can use any old ARM cross compiler?
>>
>> What exactly is the boot process and how does this limit the size of the
>> kernel image? There's a way to get uboot on there - how can I do this? Does
>> the kernel always need to be sent over serial?
>>
>> Sorry for all the questions, but without reading the entire mailing list
>> there doesn't seem to be an easy way to find answers!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ed
>>
>
>
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